The final book in the Siana’s War Trilogy, The Dreamer and the Dancer, is now published through Kindle and available on Amazon:

• The Dreamer and the Dancer Kindle ebook version:  https://shorturl.at/SIVjx

• The Dreamer and the Dancer paperback version:  https://shorturl.at/UNEud

This is the end of a long journey! I started brainstorming Siana’s War (book one) in 2003, based on some ideas gleaned from my childhood writings. I wrote Siana’s War and Princess of Time between 2004 and 2006 and I wrote what has become The Dreamer and the Dancer from 2009 to 2012. It doesn’t seem all that long ago.

Because writing is not my main vocation, it was a struggle to consider how to publish these books… finding a traditional publisher is a time consuming endeavor, and so is marketing a self-published book. Since I’m also marketing my music school 24:7, by about 2019 I realized that I wasn’t going to have the time for either of those things. But I also didn’t want Siana’s War to sit on a digital shelf and be read by no one. So I decide to self-publish, whether or not I had the time to push the marketing side of things, so that I could have three real books on a shelf and share them with whomever was interested.

When I was 10 or 11, before I really got into guitar, I might have told you I was going to be a writer. Having three books with beautiful covers (thanks to the artistry of my son Ian) available for sale online and at a local bookstore (Walls of Books in Covington and Issaquah, WA) feels like I’ve achieved another of my dreams.

So is this the end of the journey? I don’t think so. I imagine writing music books or hiking guides (I did publish a hiking guide in 2000 through the Issaquah Alps Trails Club), so it’s not the end of my journey as a writer. But I’m also not sure it’s the end of my journey with the Siana universe.

The unpublished version of The Dreamer and the Dancer included a teaser second epilogue hinting at a further chapter of Siana’s role in the world of the Aedolae. When I finished the book in 2012 I was definitely imagining a book four along those lines. But in the years since, my desire to write another volume in that linear trajectory has cooled a bit. So I removed that epilogue at publication.

What has happened instead is a growing interest in centering a new story within that universe on Paris’ daughter Violetta. So over the past few years Violetta’s story is what I find my imagination returning to. I don’t know if a story centered on her qualifies as book four. My life is a lot different now than it was when I started the rough draft of The Dreamer and the Dancer in 2009, so I haven’t yet taken the plunge to work on another novel…aside from random ruminations while hiking with my dog. But I’m getting closer. I’ll be sure to keep you posted here.

For now, I hope you’ll check out the Trilogy on Amazon. Let me know what you think!